Trump has been talking about his famous wall since day one. But he has already constructed a wall which he doesn’t even know he has constructed, a wall between himself and reality. When he still thinks he won the first debate while 62% know that he didn’t, he is living in his own bubble. What would a president out of touch with reality from day one be like in the course of four years? Would we see a growing discrepancy between Trump’s reality and the real world reality and a president ensconcing himself in a mental bunker, not the place from which we want our president to govern.

The music is a result of my studies with Gjermund Sivertsen who opened a whole new world of music to me. If any of you would like to study piano regardless of age or level I highly recommend his online course which can be accessed here: https://popjazzonline.com/

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When Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy the reaction varied from amused, shocked, to skeptical. Fat cats having to pay taxes like us, the end of corporate subsidies, breaking up big banks, reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, a single payer health care insurance system. Is this guy crazy? What people take for granted here in Europe would never go down in the U.S. We Americans escaped from Europe and we have always considered ourselves to be exceptional (i.e. superior). We are definitely exceptional. We have the highest rate of hunger and poverty in the western world, not to mention the greatest gap between the fats cats and the rest of us, not to mention the highest incarceration rate. So when Bernie wants to change all of this, he would be challenging our sense of exceptionalism.

Now that it looks like he won’t win, the question is what will happen to his ideas? Will Hillary move back to the middle and cozy up with her Wall St. supporters, drop her promise for a $15 an hour minimum wage and generally forget the people at the bottom who are becoming more and more invisible? And what will Bernie do? Judging from the past, he will continue his struggle. And God forbid, what if Trump wins? With the number of the people in the top quintile more than doubling over the past 50 years and the number of those in the middle dropping, American society is on the verge of disruption. Societies cannot function when the upper privileged 20% live in a bubble isolated from the rest. A society is dependent on a strong middle class to provide the necessary services on which 80% depend. When the upper 20% who own 93% of the wealth and possess most of the political power forget that they live in a society, then they may be rudely awakened even in their gated cities, whether the “gates” be mental or physical. If people don’t realize how important this election is, then they don’t understand the dynamics in all societies.

A living wage is calculated to be between $12.50 and $15 per hour. Employees at McDonalds earn on average $7.72 per hour and at Walmart $8.82. Now here’s the irony. Tax payers subsidize these salaries through food stamps, a necessary supplement to keep these low paid workers from experiencing hunger. By the way, 14% of all Americans experience “Food Insecurity” as it is so nicely described i.e HUNGER. The irony is a double whammy. While the government is subsidizing Walmart’s low wages so that their employees don’t go hungry, Walmart earns money because many of these low paid workers buy their food at Walmart. To add to the irony, they threatened to cancel construction of three Walmarts in Washington D.C. when the city council tried to force them to pay $12.50 per hour. They have no moral incentive to raise wages because they know that the government will pick up the difference so their employees won’t starve. Add to this that the Paul Ryan budget, supported by many Republicans, will gut the program which 43.6 million Americans are dependent on so that they can eat at the end of the month. And the final irony is, guess who is against Ryan’s threatened cut. Yes, you got it, Walmart supports the food stamp program. Why wouldn’t they? It’s paying part of their employees’ salaries and helping their bottom line. God bless America!!